WRGB to area’s tennis fans: You aren’t important

WRGB (CBS-6) is showing tennis fans again today that they aren’t important.

The U.S. Open men’s final, pushed back a day because of rain Saturday in New York, is being shown live on CBS, but the local affiliate has chosen again to dump coverage on sister station WCWN (CW-45, available on Ch. 15 on Time Warner) to protect its regularly schedule programming.

WRGB last year similarly disrespected its tennis audience to show “Ellen” at 4 p.m. and its local news block at 5. We did check last night with someone at the station, who believed that the tennis would stay on CBS-6.

This is the fifth straight year the men’s final has been played on a Monday. In 2009, for a final between Roger Federer and Juan Martin Del Potro, WRGB kept the tennis and moved the other shows to WCWN.

Pete Dougherty

13 Responses

I am not usually a tennis fan. However, when you publize on your TV Guide , etc. that the finals of the Mens US Open will be on channel 6 CBS at 4 PM Monday and it isn’t: and, there is no indicatication of where is may have been moved to (if at all) shame on Time Warner Albany. I took me 1/2 an hour of searching on the internet to find out where it was is moved to Channel 15. That I had to find out from ASK.com. Not even Time Warner Cable TV web page had that information
I understand this is not the first time Albany has done this switch without telling subscribers…people get removed from their jobs for such continued poor public relations. Again Shame on time Warner Albany

Pity for those tennis fans who set their DVR to record “2012 US Open Tennis” on WRGB, when they should have been taping “The New Adventures of Old Christine”, “May Name is Earl” and “Two and a Half Men” on WCWN! Had to call the NEWSROOM at WRGB to get them to answer their phone. Claimed there was a trailer on Channel 6 telling us where the tennis could be found, but I checked the station again and it certainly wasn’t there when I looked. Tennis may not be the country’s most popular spectator sport, but the mens final at the US Open is the premier TV event for the sport in this country. Can’t imagine that “Ellen” fans would be as upset about missing one show as area tennis fans will be about missing this championship. Lucky for most that the Tennis Channel will show it again at 7:00.

The self-importance of the local television stations is staggering at times. NBC 13 had us miss a huge chunk of the Notre Dame – Purdue game on Saturday so they could deliver a poorly organized, hyper-inflated weather coverage of a weather event that was, in fact, no big deal. And the other local channels didn’t interrupt their games for 20 minutes, so why NBC? CBS at least has the coverage on another channel, available over the air. God forbid they make the masses miss Ellen and Liz on 6.

I don’t mind that they moved it, but I knew from past experience where to look. And as we saw on Saturday, they clearly have a working ticker that could’ve been running continuously, announcing the move.

The bigger problem is when they moved it back to CBS at 7, Murray’s game didn’t follow.

Money talks. I’m sure CBS6 feels Ellen and their local 5P-7P news block are more profitable than tennis. Nice slap in the face not only to Tennis fans, but your own network you’re affiliated with.

If Ellen was important to your station’s budget, then move tennis over to CW15 and/or your “ThisTV” subchannel (6.2). Otherwise, keep the tennis on your main and move Ellen/News over to your other properties. Regardless, your viewers need to know what’s going on… and don’t assume people are tuning in right at 4PM.

You know — CRAWLS WORK, Channel 6. Use them for more than broadcasting your contract issues with satellite providers.

[I haven’t felt good about “CBS6 Albany” since they made the change to be CBS6. Bring back the “Channel 6, we’re everywhere.”]

If you think WRGB makes these programming decisions, then you have no idea how Television works in this day and age.

Every week, the CORPORATE owners of WRGB (Sinclair Broadcasting Corp.) make the decisions of what to air/when to air it and what to move to CW15.

When the employees come in, they have an email that tells them when and where they will be airing.

No one at the station ever has a choice in the matter and I’m sure they’d love to get paid what the corp. suits that tell them what to do make, but they don’t. Not to mention I’m sure they love all the angry phone calls they get while trying to put on a news show.